Yongbin Ruan

Yongbin Ruan (阮勇文) is a Chinese mathematician specializing in algebraic, differential, and symplectic geometry with applications to string theory, who left his Bill Fulton Collegiate Professorship at the University of Michigan — a position he had held since 1996 — to join Zhejiang University's Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (IASM) as a permanent faculty member in January 2020.

Ruan earned his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1991 under Robion Kirby and Tomasz Mrowka. He subsequently held postdoctoral and faculty positions at Michigan State University, the University of Utah, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he became a Van Vleck Chair Professor, before moving to Michigan in 2006.

Ruan is known for his contributions to Gromov-Witten invariants and quantum cohomology, Chen-Ruan cohomology, and FJRW theory. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998 and is a Sloan Research Fellow and AMS Fellow. In 2021, he was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was one of the earliest senior mathematicians recruited to IASM, helping establish the institute's reputation as a destination for returning Chinese mathematical talent.